A strong thunderstorm with high winds blew through one evening, and the next day I found a robin’s egg on the ground below the river birch in our front year. I looked up and couldn’t see a nest directly overhead, but it must have fallen out of a nest from somewhere in the tree . Robin eggs are so unique with their recognizable pale blue color. It was so pretty, I took a few photos of it.

On some pebbles…

and in the creeping Jenny.

The fate of this little egg concerned me (especially after I got to experience raising chicks in an incubator last spring.) I knew there was a little bird inside, but not sure if it was alive. “If I could only put it in a nest somewhere,” I thought. Ah! I remembered a nest I found in a tree in our backyard! Maybe, just maybe, I could place the egg in that nest and a bird somewhere could “adopt” it. The brown-headed cowbird will lay her egg in another birds’ nests, and leave the rearing to the host bird. I was hopeful that this poor little unborn robin would endure the same treatment.

I placed the egg in the empty nest.

The following day, I checked on the egg and something, perhaps another bird, had pushed it out of the center of the nest and it was lying on the edge. Did the bird know it wasn’t viable and tried to move it out of the nest? Did I tamper with nature or taint the nest or the egg? I guess I will never know.

A while after the incident with the robin egg, I found a nest a mother robin had built in another tree. The nest was low enough in the tree that I could take a peek at her eggs. There were four eggs, but I could never take a picture of them because the robin would sit in a nearby tree and make a shrieking call as to warn me to quickly move away. As soon as I’d walk away, she would fly to her nest and resume her sitting.

The baby robins soon hatched and now they live in the nest and wait to be fed by their parents.

Today, I was working in the flower bed by our deck, and male robin stood on the ground at a distance and watched me.

I know what he wanted, he was interested in the earthworms in the fresh dirt I was digging. I decided to do him a favor and I picked a worm out of the dirt and tossed it to him.

I didn’t toss it directly to him, but in a different direction, as to not startle him.

He hopped over to the area where the worm lay, turned his head to the ground, and gobbled it up.

After tossing a few worms to him, it became a game. I noticed how he would stand at a distance and wait for another worm.

I probably threw six or more earthworms to him.

I returned to dig for another worm and the next thing I knew, he just disappeared. I guess he was full.

8 responses to “A story about robins”

I’ve always wondered why robin’s eggs are blue.
I guess it’s a Darwinian example of Natural Selection: people eat white eggs, but not blue eggs. I’m pretty sure people would eat white Smurfs, but not blue ones.
It’s like the Dr. Seuss book “Green Eggs and Ham”.
I could be wrong; I usually am.

… if I was an egg, I’d want to be a rotten one … because then people wouldn’t eat me and I’d be born.

note: sometimes I buy a bags of worms and go to the park and feed the birds. hee hee!

I’ve done more gardening since this post and had more encounters with the robin. I’m not sure if he is the same one, but he enjoys the worm treats.
He even likes grubs and can carry two at a time in his beak!